In this painting, Tissot's model, Kathleen Newton, wears the striking, simple brown floral dress also worn in three oil versions (and one watercolor version) of La sœur aînée (The Elder Sister, c. 1881), and in The Garden Bench (c. 1882, private collection). The little girl is in the exact same pose and outfit as in a group photograph we have, and in the third version of Waiting for the Ferry. The man uses his cane to trace "I love you" in the ground beneath the woman's gaze. — Lucy Paquette

Image made available by the museum on the Creative Commons licence. Formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee. [Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]